Here's an image that I took about 2 1/2 months ago, on Feb. 16th. It shows 3 of the galaxies catalogued by Charles Messier - M95, M96, and M105 - along with a few bonus galaxies. In fact many of the "stars" in this image are actually galaxies as well. Click here for a larger version of this image.
The RCX would have been a much better choice for these targets (although they wouldn't have fit in a single field of view), but since it has been set up for spectroscopy for quite a while now I have not used it much for imaging. One of these days I really want to get the imaging camera back on, but that may not happen until the new observatory is built.
Yard work is continuing in preparation for Xanadu West. There is a lot of clearing to be done and we're also making some other changes back there so it's taking a while. I already have the shed waiting to be built, but the piers have not arrived yet. Eventually I plan to have a 10x13 shed with a removable roof, housing two piers; I'll be collecting tons of data!
Speaking of data, I had a terrible experience yesterday...I was in the process of moving and backing up older imaging data and somehow managed to lose almost all of my 2006 original data. The irony is that it happened while I was intentionally organizing things so as to prevent data loss! Needless to say I am upset about that. So many lessons to learn in this hobby. Fortunately most of the useful data had already been processed, but it's good to keep old data in case you want to try new processing tricks, or need to check for a supernova, etc. I did lose a lot of data on M42 that I had hoped to spend some serious time on.
Texas Star Party is coming soon, less than 2 weeks until I'll be on the road. Sadly the family cannot come with me, but several friends will be there. I'm scheduled to give an afternoon talk on amateur spectroscopy; I'm really excited about that. Plus there's going to be a new scope delivered to me at TSP...let's just say that hopefully the eyepieces will no longer be getting dusty!
No comments:
Post a Comment